Vets to play bigger role in animal welfare cases

Media release

5 July 2007

Vets to play bigger role in animal welfare cases

Veterinarians at the New Zealand Veterinary Association conference in Christchurch tomorrow will be asked to play a bigger role in reporting animal welfare cases, particularly on farms,.

“Vets are in a good position, not only to follow up on cases, but also to be pro-active and deal with situations before they become major problems,” says veterinarian Richard Wild of the New Zealand Food Safety Authority’s Verification Agency (NZFSA VA).

He says the conference is a good opportunity to remind all vets of the role they can play in educating clients and raising awareness of the animal welfare aspects of their farming operations.

Veterinarians have a responsibility to mitigate animal suffering and, where necessary, to report cases of animal welfare abuse, says Charles Cadwallader of MAF Biosecurity New Zealand’s animal welfare group.

NZFSA VA employs 120 veterinarians who monitor the welfare of animals arriving at slaughter premises.

“They have an educational role to provide feedback to farmers, transport operators and livestock agents where animal welfare is an issue,” says Richard. “More serious cases are referred to Biosecurity’s Compliance and Enforcement Group for further investigation.”

Conference attendees will have the chance to hear from Richard and Charles on a Memorandum of Understanding (MOU) recently signed by both agencies in an effort to get tough on animal welfare cases.

Under the new MOU 12 veterinarians from the NZFSA VA have received training to provide independent technical support to Biosecurity on-farm investigators.

“In the past VA vets have not had a role in on-farm investigations which have been done by private vet practitioners if, and when, they are available,” says Richard. “However, because the vets sometimes had to investigate their clients’ animals, it meant conflicts of interest arose.”

“We now have a group of VA staff distributed across the North and South Island, trained in animal welfare investigations, who we can call on to help with on-farm investigations,” says Charles.

Their primary role will be to identify what’s wrong with the animals in question and work with farm consultants to remedy it, ensuring that an animal health plan is in place before MAF leaves the farm. Their secondary role will be to carry out post-mortems and assist farmers to put farm management plans in place.

“The most common scenarios we see are on farms which have no pasture management or poor farm management practices,” Charles says. “In these cases supplementary feed is non-existent so when the grass has gone that’s it.”

Last year 700 cases were reported to the animal welfare team and the majority of those relating to farm animals were reported by neighbouring farmers.

ENDS